Damian McReckless

John Smith

This is starting to get very boring.

TrevorsDen

"There are entirely legitimate issues about the unconvincing political back story of Cameron and Osborne which are partly connected to their wealth and privileged backgrounds."

Oh no there are not.

This is why its dangerous to read 'red rags' like The Independent.
Are there legitimate questions to be asked about the privileges and wealthy backgrounds of newspaper proprietors?

Michael Taylor

It's interesting that even you are now behind the curve of public opinion. Because we know we cannot trust you, because - to use your own words - "If we burned them by revealing what was said off the record then we would find that few people would talk to us" - your privileged status as reporters is gone. It's gone, just like that. Instead, you're just one of the establishment which you know, and we know, and you know we know, are habitually lying to us.

To regain public trust, you need to do something very simple and very fundamental: in every story, name your sources. If it isn't attributed, don't run it - not the gossip, not the 'line', not the smear, not the lie, not even the 'noble aspiration'. Refuse to deal with it all.

If you can't get anyone on the record, admit you haven't got a story, and start digging on something that can be source. For example, investigate the data, query the numbers, dig into the money. Anything really - Britain's hardly short of topics that could do with good political investigation. But don't expect us to value you on the basis of unattributed inside information any longer. Because why on earth should we?

This doesn't mean that journalists don't have a job any more. It's just that its got harder. Work at it - just as the unattributable briefing has contributed to the destruction of Britain, so a refusal by the press to be complicit in this mis-governance, this bastard-democracy, will give us at least a shot at recovery of our civic self-respect.

Oscar

As the Daily Pundit saracastically wrote on 3 Oct 2008:

Ben Brogan has written a moving tribute to Gordon Brown's former spin doctor, the dearly departed Damien McBride. Holding back the tears, Ben writes:

"When the Day of Reckoning comes and those of us who know are free to say what we know, Damian McBride will emerge with great credit from the madness of the past few years."

Did McPoison write Ben's post for him? If so it shows he was able to praise as well as smear!

Oscar

"Journalists have to protect their sources" - Except, it seems, when that source is Guido and the journalists work for the Gordograph.

Sam Armstrong

"I’m sure this anecdote will have Coffee Housers screaming, understandably, about collusion between the media and the Brown machine"

To be honest, these days, it barely raises an eyebrow.

Forlornehope

The key point is that you know a person by the company that they keep. That aphorism needs to come up every time that Brown attempts to take a moral tone on anything.

Fergus Pickering

Does anyone care whether Cameron took serious drugs at university? I'm sure you did. I didn't, but then I'm older and drugs were not a problem in the 1960s in spite of the crap talked by people who are too young to have been there. If cameron took drugs that would mean he was more like ordinary people in his age group, wouldn't it? In my experience, all people under forty take drugs, took drugs. A pity, but there it is

Kevyn Bodman

This anecdote shows more of what an unpleasant man McBride is.

But James,'what we could tell the public would be severely limited', you write.

The MSM is going to be damaged by this because a greater number of people will understand that an awful lot of what we are told is just press releases.

News is what they don't want you to find out, all the rest is advertising. (Not a strictly accurate quotation but it captures the meaning.)

Much of the MSM has been, and remains, complicit in spreading advertising.

Guido is undoubtedly the hero of the last few days.

Doug

"protecting sources" doesn't cut it when it comes to sources of smear campaigns. It is very clear now that there are many journalists who consider the protection of sources of smear as important as a source of substantive information. It's not and it is unacceptable. If for a nanosecond we believe that Brown didn't know what McBride was doing then isn't it incumbent on journalists to show Brown what his employees are doing in his name? The government is owned by the people they should be open, honest and put information in the public domain for any and all to publish and read.

HJ

McBride is, apparently, 34 years old.

His puffy aged face makes him look like a 50-year old in poor health. Perhaps it is he who has a drinking problem?

Frank Pulley

James

If you are trying to spin this little episode of 6th form japery to the Tories benefit (and I stress the 'if' - given the record of this magazine in recent months), then it seems to me to be backfiring. To the average punter, applying, as they do, the old adage, "There's no smoke without fire", it merely reinforces the image of the Tory party as a sleazy bunch of toffs with lots of hedonistic skeletons in the cupboard. Everybody knows that the spin machines of all parties are continually trawling for shit on their adversaries, so what's new? How is the fact that someone hacked into, or stole, private emails on behalf of the Tories going to help Cameron's cause? And what is this magazine's obsession with demanding that people apologise for their sins (particularly those that are committed by associates, rather than their own)? Is there a confessional priest on the staff or something?

There is no one on the face of this Earth who despises the one-eyed Scottish freak and all who service his baleful objectives more than I do. But of all things he is up to at the moment that deserve a constant barrage of abuse directed at him, I would have thought that this pompous persiflage is the least important. What are you like?

As for your infatuation with the thoughts of your Guru, Steve Richards - get a room ffs!

Wilhelm

HJ

The thug does look like a boozer, very red face.

strapworld

The weak, compliant 'political journalists' feeding off scraps from His Master's Table have been well and truly found out.

The Telegraph has been exposed as an unprincipled newspaper, with journalists prepared, it appears, to break confidences and report the story to Number 10!!

Cowards all. Not one willing to stand out and name names, to highlight the wicked administration to the people- who pay their wages. They have forgotten to whom they owe loyalty- and it is not Politicians.

The blogs have proved that when a story emerges it can be done without the favour of crumbs from Browns accolytes!

Shame of all you journalists, you have let the people-who pay your wages-down.

Oscar

Journalists protecting sources was supposed to be about protecting the little guy against the powerful. Protecting and spinning for the government and lying to the common person is not acting as 'the fourth estate' - it's simply corrupt. As Peter Oborne has argued so well, you guys have got way too close to the government.

Tina

The sources of stories do not need to be revealed. It's the sheer level of bias in favour of New Labour that grates.

I get the impression Richard Littlejohn is not much liked by the Westminster press lackeys, but he represents many of us when he wrote recently:

"Still he [Brown] has the brazen audacity to pose as the saviour of the world, a fantasy kept afloat by the fawning coverage of the boys in the bubble, who have long since abandoned objective reporting and are now reduced to taking dictation at the back of the bus."

This is the impression we get, particularly after the Telegraph's front page a few days ago. Do people behave like this just to get future scoops thrown their way? The Government machine seems to have a total grip on far too many in the media.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1165129/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-What-earth-Gordon-Brown-doing-Brazil.html

JohnOfEnfield

It is difficult to know where to start when discussing the ramifications of this Easter weekend's news.

Surely Brown is destroyed forever. The electorate - left, right and centre - will never believe another word he says.

I think the BBC has lost it as well as a major a MSM player - it is impossible to listen to a news programme, or watch Newsnight for example, without discounting everything that is put before you as being what the Labour government wants you to hear or not hear. I have even stopped shouting at the television and radio any more - a long tradition in our family!

The rest of the MSM need to watch their step. Clearly the likes of Guido Fawkes cannot be the main players - even in a dis-intermediated news industry - but the MSM left him an open goal. Where were you?

Chuck Unsworth

Journalists 'being used' is an interesting choice of phrase. I know and have known several eminent journalists. One might also argue that journalists 'use' others, too. Let's be clear. There's a very obvious symbiosis between journalists and politicians.

What journalists should take great care to do is to ensure their personal reputations for integrity. As for politicians, well in many cases their reputations are beyond repair.

Fearless Frank

Am I the first to point out that SPADS - "special advisers" - are, when talking about railway accidents, "Signals Passed At Danger"?

JONNY

'merely reinforces the image of the Tory party as a sleazy bunch of toffs with lots of hedonistic skeletons in the cupboard.'

Nice one Frank Pulley.
Looks like McBride has a ready replacement.

George Laird

Dear John Smith @ 12.26 pm

"This is starting to get very boring".

Far from it, we need a full judical enquiry into the full extent of the smear campaign.

We need to know all involved, was taxpayers money misused etc.

Brown's statement of no ministers involved is not good enough.

When did he hold an inquiry?

Are there documents that prove Brown conducted such an inquiry?

Perhaps the Tories and particularly Nadine Dorries should get an FOI request in for the papers of the investigation.

Finally, if there is no paper trail of Brown contacting all Government ministers to get these assurances of innocence, does that mean it is possible that Gordon Brown is a liar?

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

David Ossitt

Frank Pulley.

"There is no one on the face of this Earth who despises the one-eyed Scottish freak and all who service his baleful objectives more than I do".

Do not kid yourself; you are a long way down the list.

Your post shows that you have been; are now or will be in the future a labour supporter.

You can not begin to understand how much the man is truly loathed; by those who would rather slash their wrists than support labour.

Frank Pulley

David Ossit

I am not and will never be a NuLab or Brown Lab supporter; the cabinet kitchen politics is puerile, whichever party employs it. For this mag to recycle rumours of Tory sleaze punted around on the internal Downing Street mail melee (particularly when it is hacked or stolen), whether allegations of juvenile japes, or sexual/drugs indiscretions, wives with PMT etc. and to ferment a hue and cry over it, strikes me as unwise from a Tory point of view; particularly when both Cameron and Osborne have been playing a straight bat just recently. It rekindles, in the minds of the wavering section of the electorate, the Bullington Club and the Mandelson meeting on a Russian yacht stupidity. It is by no means certain that what was discussed in the leaked emails would have in fact surfaced had Staines not disseminated it. The weekend press frenzy could be more deleterious to the Tories than to NuLab in the long run. A war of hacking emails would be a dangerous game, I would think.

We all fervently wish for a change of government; it's true I'm not all that impressed with the Cameroons; but they are the only hope we have, even though they are by no means home and dry. If the best HM Opposition and their MSM and blog contacts can come up with, at a time of international financial crisis, ceding of sovereignty, wholesale corruption and petty parliamentary fiddling, is that government apparatchiks are saying rude (and possibly untrue) things about the Tories and their wives, behind their backs, then their priorities are skewed.

As I inferred in my previous post, the upshot of this furore could well be an amplification of the impression that Cameron and Osborne are prone to the reputed prattish behaviour of Etonian privilege and excess. Why feed the minds of the undecided voters with more innuendo? I'm sure McBride and the other Brown henchmen will just go to ground - it's a minor setback for them obviously. But Brown, Smith, Harman, Straw, McNumpty et al. are still in post, despite this little Easter press jamboree. The silly season seems to have started a little early this year: anyone for a game of cross-dressing tennis?

On a day when Obama was on a mega bullshit exercise with his grandiose plans for world Socialism, we’re all going on about scurrilous back room pox-doctor's clerks. Bloody hell!

Frank Pulley

David Ossit

I am not and will never be a NuLab or Brown Lab supporter; the cabinet kitchen politics is puerile, whichever party employs it. For this mag to recycle rumours of Tory sleaze punted around on the internal Downing Street mail melee (particularly when it is hacked or stolen), whether allegations of juvenile japes, or sexual/drugs indiscretions, wives with PMT etc. and to ferment a hue and cry over it, strikes me as unwise from a Tory point of view; particularly when both Cameron and Osborne have been playing a straight bat just recently. It rekindles, in the minds of the wavering section of the electorate, the Bullington Club and the Mandelson meeting on a Russian yacht stupidity. It is by no means certain that what was discussed in the leaked emails would have in fact surfaced had Staines not disseminated it. The weekend press frenzy could be more deleterious to the Tories than to NuLab in the long run. A war of hacking emails would be a dangerous game, I would think.

We all fervently wish for a change of government; it's true I'm not all that impressed with the Cameroons; but they are the only hope we have, even though they are by no means home and dry. If the best HM Opposition and their MSM and blog contacts can come up with, at a time of international financial crisis, ceding of sovereignty, wholesale corruption and petty parliamentary fiddling, is that government apparatchiks are saying rude (and possibly untrue) things about the Tories and their wives, behind their backs, then their priorities are skewed.

As I inferred in my previous post, the upshot of this furore could well be an amplification of the impression that Cameron and Osborne are prone to the reputed prattish behaviour of Etonian privilege and excess. Why feed the minds of the undecided voters with more innuendo? I'm sure McBride and the other Brown henchmen will just go to ground - it's a minor setback for them obviously. But Brown, Smith, Harman, Straw, McNumpty et al. are still in post, despite this little Easter press jamboree. The silly season seems to have started a little early this year: anyone for a game of cross-dressing tennis?

On a day when Obama was on a mega bullshit exercise with his grandiose plans for world Socialism, we’re all going on about scurrilous back room pox-doctor's clerks. Bloody hell!

David Ossitt

Frank Pulley.

"I am not and will never be a NuLab or Brown Lab supporter".

Frank you give the game away by denying that which I never said of you.

So typical of labour.

I wrote;

"Your post shows that you have been; are now or will be in the future a labour supporter".

Can you; will you deny this?

Frank Pulley

Btw, David O; I would see a shrink about those suicidal tendencies; I'm all for a conservative government but bleeding to death for one might be considered a bit over the top, particularly as there is a strong possibility that voting in the Cameron Crew is not necessarily the same thing. Personally, I still want some reassurances about resistance to Eurpoean bureacracy; keeping our currency intact; return to apolitical policing; a rigorous policy on illegal immigration and a firmer stance against militant Islam before I become convinced that Cameron is not just another Gramscian mole.

Paul B

I think he has David, and you are splitting hairs. Anyone who has read this blog for sometime will have read Frank Ps splendidly angry and withering attacks on Labours, Browns & Blairs policies.

Sorry Mr Pulley for intervening, I'm sure you can defend yourself more than adequately, but I cannot see an injustice go unanswered. My advise to David is to stop digging. Just for the record in 1979, the first GE I was able to vote in, to my eternal shame, I voted Labour,I have never made the same mistake again, although in 83 I abstained. Road to Damascus was long. But I now inhabit the sunlit uplands and I am satisfied that I sit on the correct & right (in both its meanings) side of debate.

TGF UKIP

I look foward to Guido naming the "presenter" on whom McBride was so confident he could rely -guesses anyone beyond the obvious Naughtie.

David Ossitt

Paul B.

I am truly pleased that you now see the light.

But I am not splitting hairs; words matter, he has not denied my assertion that he has been, is now or will be a future labour supporter.

Where is the injustice; it is only my opinion, you have the right to disagree.

Frank Pulley

There is obviously no point in further engagement with you about this issue, David Ossitt. You have either (a) not bothered to fully read any of the above three comments I posted, or (b) completely failed to understand the points I made. If you interpret what I wrote as being support for any one of the odious slugs in the current Administration; or any of their apparatchiks; or the Labour party past, present or future, then you have a serious problem of dyslexia to mention when you next visit your shrink about your self-destructive urges.

Paul B

Thanks for your attempt to wise-up David; he seems to think that any criticism of the policies (or lack thereof) of the Cameroons, or of the editorial posters on this blog indicates past, present, or future membership of the Labour party; whereas in this case I merely pointing out there is a serious degree of pissing into the wind about this current sleaze jamboree and we all know what happens when you do that. And I didn't even mention the hypocrisy involved. Politics is a dirty old game and I haven't noticed any reluctance on the part of this blog to malign the lefties at every opportunity and in anyway possible. Indeed, I confess to having been very scurrilously rude indeed to them myself on occasions. But as my old granny used to say, "If you don't like the heat, stay out of the cabinet kitchen." :-)

The funniest thing I saw this weekend was Michael Heseltine pontificating about it. What a duplicitous bullshitter; talk about kettles, pots and black-asses. A plague on all their houses.

David Ossitt

Hi Frank; that was a lot of bluff and bluster but you still did not answer my assertion.

I wonder why?

Frank Pulley

I refer you to the first sentence of my last post. Now we're done.